Hyundai Automobile Resource Regeneration Centre

The Automobile Resource Regeneration Centre is the polar opposite of a production line; a better description of it would be 'disintegration line'.

Based at Namyang in South Korea, the Hyundai facility is testing the most efficient ways of recycling cars that have reached the end of their working lives. It sounds mundane, but there's an important purpose underpinning the work going on there. The recycling centre is assessing and proving processes for the careful and calculated dismantling of vehicles in a way that's friendly to the environment. We were told by Irene Kim, or guide and one of the research engineers at the centre, that this has all come about in the lead-up to new legislation from Europe.

By 2015, the European Union will insist that all vehicles sold in Europe must be constructed from at least 85 per cent recyclable materials. At the end of each vehicle's life, it must be dismantled entirely and the recyclable parts are to be recycled. South Korea, home of Hyundai, is likely to follow the Europeans' lead too.

So while the recycling centre looks like a conventional, commercial vehicle dismantling operation, it's still a work in progress. Once the process is fully established, centres like this one will be founded all across Europe and Korea to process cars that are no longer viable for day-to-day transport.

Since the recycling centre at Namyang is a laboratory, in effect, not a commercial dismantling operation, it is subject to tight security. We were told that our Australian media contingent was the first ever to be allowed more than three hours' access to the Namyang facility, but cameras and mobile phones weren't permitted inside the recycling centre.

On the day of the visit, there was a funereal air about the facility; the weather was overcast and there were lines of wrecked i40 wagons stacked on top of each other, three or four high — sort of a car abattoir.

16 cars a day are processed at the facility, with each car fully dismantled at 30-minute intervals. Dismantling is an eight-stage operation, with the cars processed inside a dedicated building. Initially, the vehicle is identified and weighed. The second stage of the operation involves deploying the vehicle's airbags. Hyundai's workers run a wireless deployment system that ensures no one will have head or limbs torn off by an exploding airbag.

It works like this: each vehicle is brought into an isolation chamber on a trolley. Once it's safe to do so, the responsible staff member presses a button that sends a command wirelessly to the car. Every airbag in the vehicle is deployed safely. The airbag cushions are nylon and can be recycled, so they are removed from the vehicle at this point.

From there, the vehicle moves along the line to the third stage of dismantling, where the wheels and tyres are removed. Once the tyres are removed from the wheels, they can be recycled separately. In stage four, the car's fluids are removed; that includes brake fluid, coolant, fuel and lubricants. Naturally the vehicle has to be elevated for workers to get to the brake lines, fuel tank, radiator, sump, etc.

Further along the line, at stage five, workmen remove bumpers and other exterior features, such as tail lights. For the bumpers to be recycled, exterior paint must be stripped off as a separate sub-process, carried out elsewhere.

Workmen get inside the car for stage six, the removal of interior fixtures, comprising plastics, glass, seats, wiring looms, mouldings, instruments and radiators. Yes, in the case of the last, the 'interior' is the engine bay. Ms Kim says that interior plastics are difficult to remove and they are a significant challenge to distinguish and separate from each other.

At the next station, stage seven, the entire drivetrain and all the car's underpinnings are removed. For this process, the vehicle is tilted on its side to allow easy access to the underbody. The components removed during this stage are engine, transmission, final drive, suspension, steering and brakes.

Finally comes stage eight — where the body in white is crushed. It's an inglorious end to any car — but the materials recovered will find their way back into the manufacturing process, forming part of a new car. So recycling cars resembles a sort of automotive circle of life — and its merits lie in reducing the burden on the environment.

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